On the evening of April 6, Bai Yansong connected with the military to support Hubei Front Expert Group Leader and People’s Liberation Army General Hospital Respiratory Specialist Liu Youning. Professor Liu said that with the extension of the epidemic, some healthy people have been found to be carrying viruses. For healthy virus carriers.
What is a healthy virus carrier and why do healthy people carry the virus?
According to an interview with Professor Liu Youning, they found that there are individual healthy people carrying new coronaviruses. These people have the following characteristics:
1) The throat swab nucleic acid test is positive;
2) Multiple consecutive and multi-day blood tests were negative for COVID-19 virus antibody;
3) From beginning to end, the patient has no discomfort and is a “healthy person”;
4) Have a very clear history of epidemiology.
Based on these points, we can know that the virus nucleic acid test of these people is positive, but the body does not produce antibodies and will not get sick.
How is it different from asymptomatic patients?
According to the “New Coronavirus Pneumonia Prevention and Control Plan (Sixth Edition)” issued by the National Health Commission, asymptomatic infections refer to asymptomatic or clinically recognizable symptoms such as fever, cough, sore throat And signs), however, those with COVID-19 virus etiology (usually referred to as nucleic acid detection) or serum specific immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibody test positive for respiratory tract specimens.
Healthy virus carriers are also nucleic acid positive, but have no symptoms, so, strictly speaking, healthy virus carriers are also a special type of asymptomatic infection.
However, there is still a certain difference from the asymptomatic infected people we usually understand. Asymptomatic infected people may indeed appear nucleic acid positive. However, as the disease progresses, the immune system in our body will react to the virus and produce specific Antibodies eliminate these viruses.
Therefore, with the development of time, the traditionally asymptomatic infected person will produce antibodies in the body, which will eliminate the virus. At this time, the blood test is positive.
This is the most important difference between the two. Asymptomatic infections can eliminate the virus, while virus carriers may carry the virus for a long time and cannot be removed.
What are the threats of carriers of healthy viruses?
First of all, it must be clear whether healthy virus carriers have live viruses in their bodies. It has not yet been determined. The nucleic acid test is positive, which may be a dead virus fragment or a live virus. There is no way to distinguish between nucleic acid tests. If you can grow live virus from these carriers, you can be 100% sure that there is live virus in your body.
So, everyone should not be overly nervous, but we must remain vigilant.
If there is indeed a live virus in the body, then it is very dangerous. Such a person is more terrible than an asymptomatic person.
Because these healthy virus carriers have the virus in their bodies, but they do not get sick, they cannot produce antibodies, and they cannot eliminate the virus in the body. Then he may become a mobile source of infection and can spread the virus to other people.
Such a person acts as an intermediate host. The COVID-19 virus and him have reached a balance, and do not harm each other. Just like bats, bats carry a variety of coronaviruses. These coronaviruses do not cause bats to get sick, but they do It can be transmitted to other animals or humans through bats.
Famous health carrier in history-Typhoid Mary
The very famous typhoid Mary in history is a healthy carrier. Mary has typhoid bacteria in her body, but she does not get sick and there is no way to remove typhoid bacteria from her body.
Mary is a cook. Typhoid fever broke out wherever she went to work. The doctors used a variety of medicines, that is, they could not kill the typhoid bacillus in Mary. In the end, she could only isolate her forever until Mary died. The typhoid bacillus in her body has not been cleared.
In her life, Mary directly transmitted 52 cases of typhoid fever, of which 7 died, and countless people were indirectly infected.
All in all, we do n’t know what the proportion of healthy virus carriers said by experts, whether there are live viruses in the body, how infectious, if it is a live virus, how long the virus will survive in the body, and how can we eliminate these viruses? , We are eager to have more data.
Both asymptomatic infected persons and healthy virus carriers may be potential hidden dangers. Everyone should pay attention to them, pay close attention to the progress in this area, go into public places, wear masks, wash hands frequently, and do protective work. Take it lightly.